First failure expanding - learning experience - renting rooms

[Nate Hurwitz]

Hi,

First I just want to mention that I think this is a great community!  I really love all the advice I see here and I am pretty new to the forums so please take it easy on me ;-)

My Story:

I started originally renting rooms out of a home I bought and did well, so well that I was able to expand an extra couple rooms on the home and make more income.  Then I continued to setup a structure for property management to help manage the room.  This was great, then word got out to a friend that I was doing well with my process and structuring so my friend wanted me to begin renting out rooms in his home.  I did, and I now I am making him over 12k per year.  Needless to say, he is happy and a minor property management was born from a simple dream to buy a home.  I am able to find great tenants in my area, I actually had to turn down over 20k in offers in the past couple months!  So my next move...buy another home to put this demand in.

Fast forward to today, I was given an offer for a home that would have rented 4 rooms and could add on a 5th.  Great profit after expenses (even with mortgage, utilities, taxes, and maintenance costs).  The cost was 135k .  This was my first time seeing if I could invest in a second house on my own...Sadly, I called the bank and found out because I am self employed with a mortgage, my utilization rate is high...90% as a matter of fact.  Even if I work hard this year, its going to take years at this rate to do it on my own and get a new home.

I am posting because I am looking for advice on how I can take the demand of tenants I have and find a way to work with an investor or learn how to structure a deal with multiple individuals to purchase a home.  I don't know all the avenues for investing...frankly I barely know where to start outside a mortgage.  All I know is I have a stellar management system, high demand in amazing tenants, the ability to design a room (I am a designer so I pay a lot of attention to detail), can create quick profit forecasts to find out how much a potential property can make (I know my area well since I was born there).  Any advice?  It kills me to pass up so much income that I could take in or even split with others...People want the rooms I design and I just don't have the ability to tell them yes because I'm always booked up!

Anyways thanks so much...If there is any advice out there or resources you know of, I'd be so happy to learn if there is such a thing as "room rental investing"